Of Blood and Ashes
by yra
Summary: Blood. Loss. Death. Madness. The full moon always brought back the screams.
1. Disclaimer

_Disclaimer: I own no part of Sailor Moon, only the original story ideas contain herein._

 _A.N.: Let me explain. I'm doing the NaNoWriMo challenge this year with the idea of doing a series of short horror stories instead of a novel. Starting to look into actually getting things published, as in with money, so I needed some practice at writing short stories. This is one of the results. Yes, this is my idea of short. Once I get through November and have enough material to start submitting stories I really, truly will finish Heart of Darkness. I will be putting at least a couple of the other stories up on Fiction Press to get some feedback, so if anyone is interested just let me know._

 _For the story at hand, please just assume that disclaimer goes all the way through. I want to see if the flow works well without the breaks._

 _Finally…feel free to critique the HECK out of this thing. I could really use the feedback._

 _Thanks!_

 _-yra_


	2. Part 1

The heavy clouds of the last few days had snuck away sometime the night before. Standing by the window of his office, Dr. Naboru stared up at a clear October sky. The sun sat on the very line of the horizon, a beautiful blazing scarlet orb that threw bands of pink and gold across the sky. It was a glorious picture.

He hated it.

Sometime in the past three years the setting of the sun had begun to feel like a betrayal. He did not even know who, or what, to blame. The earth, for spinning Tokyo out of the protection of the sunlight? The sun, for not somehow holding the planet firmly in the light? Science and medicine, for not offering him an answer?

Or did he blame the moon in its serene dance across the sky, every night swelling larger as the feeling of foreboding began to spread throughout the hospital?

Earlier that day the doctors went through another flurry of fruitless research. The nurses tightened the security measures and checked off every step of the procedure, testing locks and windows. The orderlies started their usual routines early so that they could spend extra time locking down the other wards.

Still the sun sank, and still the moon would rise, full and silver and cold, and the nightmare would begin again.


	3. Part 2

He had noticed the girl's obsession with the moon the day she arrived. She spoke of it lovingly and longingly, often staring out the window even during the daytime. Yet seconds later she again became a young girl, little more than a child at that point, and when asked about the moon she stared blankly back at the doctors. After that she would inevitably ask for her friends, and they would have to explain once more.

In that first month Dr. Naboru watched her with a sinking sadness. He felt great pity for the girl and what she had witnessed. The police report told of the horror of that scene where she had been found. Her parents, good people, openly wept as they tried to explain it to him.

Just fourteen, she should never have been out that late. Her parents had honestly thought her to be safe in her bed, fast asleep. They had been startled awake at three in the morning by a pounding on their door. Two police officers, white faced and shaken, had asked them to come to the hospital. Their daughter had been found not far from the Crown Arcade. That was all they knew until they reached the hospital.


	4. Part 3

Dr. Naboru tried for weeks to get the young girl to tell him what had happened that night, prodding at her with gentle inquiries. He tried subtly different versions, but they all boiled down to a repetition of the same questions. Why had she left the house when her parents thought her asleep? Why had the other four girls been there as well? What about the two young men? Always she stared at him in confusion and insisted she didn't remember leaving the house, or what night he was talking about. The other girls were her friends, so of course they would be with her. The young man with the blue eyes was there because he loved her.

When pressed about the other young man, she asked who he meant.

Then she would ask again if her boyfriend had come to visit her yet.

So Dr. Naboru tried the other round of questions. The people in the nearby apartment building had seen a bright light at two-thirty in the morning. Had she seen it? What did she know about the screaming that had been heard at the same time? People said it sounded like a young woman. Had that been her? Did she remember the hospital? Did she remember how she got so much blood on her when the doctors could not find a single wound?

These questions she shied away from completely, and when he persisted she turned her back and stared out the window as though she could not hear him at all. They sat for over an hour like that for several sessions, Dr. Naboru fighting to keep his frustration from bubbling up. Her blatant refusal to even acknowledge this line of inquiry showed that her supposed amnesia of what happened could not be complete. Deep down, perhaps beyond her own conscious mind, she was hiding something. Finally, three weeks into her treatment, he allowed his anger to come forth and snapped out three blunt questions.

What had happened to the other girls that night?

What had happened to the two boys?

Why was she the only one left alive?

She spun to face him, her eyes meeting his for a split second. He saw something in the depths of those impossibly blue eyes, something that seemed to shatter apart in an instant of unbearable memories. But whatever had shattered left shards with razor edges, and danger flashed there as well. Behind the pain was a bright crimson rage.


	5. Part 4

Never, though, in that first month had he considered that she might be dangerous enough to do what some suspected of her. As tiny and young as she was, he could not imagine that she was capable of the brutality that the police described to him. Blood had sprayed the outside wall of the Crown Arcade up to fifteen feet high, they said, and not just miniscule droplets. It had been so thick on the cement of the sidewalk that the police had no choice but to walk through it, leaving thick tracks as they moved from one body to the next, searching for any sign of life.

All of the police had struggled with what they saw, the total waste of young lives. It shook them to their souls, but they managed to push forward as they dealt with the bodies. They saw the lacerations and the broken bones and managed to take it somewhat in stride. Humans did these things to each other far more often than they should. But then the medical examiners had taken charge of the six bodies. It took two different examiners nearly a week to complete the autopsies. Then they silently handed a report to the police detective in charge, announced that they would be going home for the rest of the day, and left. Both showed dark smudges under their eyes, and the hands of the one holding the report shook badly. It took the detective one page to understand why.


	6. Part 5

The report was given to Dr. Naboru a few days before the girl arrived. The detective had stayed in his office, quietly waiting as the doctor flipped through page after page of the examiners' findings. This, Dr. Naboru knew, could not be possible. The witnesses from the apartment building stated that the screaming only lasted for one or two minutes, and that the bright light had been visible for even less time.

Mutely Dr. Naboru had looked at the woman on the other side of the desk and gestured to the file with one hand, his eyebrows raised in questions he could not find a voice to ask.

The detective simply nodded and said, "Every word is true. I've never seen anything like it before. If there is some merciful god, I never will again."

Quietly shutting the folder, Dr. Naboru ran a professional eye over her. "There's something else, isn't there?"

She withdrew another folder from her bag and held it out to him. When he reached to take it she held on for a moment and caught his gaze with her own. Though her hand did not shake, in her eyes he saw fear, and a warning.

"You need to know that these are the crime scene photos. There has been no editing, and we have given you every one that was taken. This is something you will never be able to forget."

Then she stood up, took her coat and her bag, and walked toward the door.

"You aren't going to stay?"

The detective glanced back over her shoulder and shook her head. "I will not look at those again unless I have no choice. You have my number if you have questions."

Out of respect to her very real distress the doctor waited until the door closed behind her before he opened the folder and withdrew the first crime scene photo.


	7. Part 6

The first police officers, a man named Fujino and a woman named Nagano, wanted to document the scene before they were forced to tread through the blood. In the photos, the scattered bodies appeared as darker red outlines amongst the carnage. The full moon that night offered enough light that seven figures could be seen clearly, all perfectly still. As the officers moved throughout the bodies, checking for signs of life, they tried to photograph each victim. In the center of it all they found two, a boy in his late teens and a younger girl, entwined in an embrace.

Before every session in that first month, Dr. Naboru stared at that picture to remind himself what she had been through.

The way she curled herself against the boy with her face tucked into the crook of his neck spoke of tenderness and love. She wrapped one arm tightly over his chest to hold him close, her hand grasping the sleeve of his shirt so tightly her knuckles turned white. Her golden hair fell loose around her, most of it free of the pigtails she clearly had been wearing before, and spread out beneath the couple almost like angel wings. Under the silvery moonlight they made a strangely beautiful tableau; lovers sleeping in an embrace, floating on crimson silk sheets.

Except what they lay on was most definitely not crimson silk. Certain both were as dead as the others, Officer Fujino still crouched down beside them to check for a pulse. From the boy's cool neck he felt nothing. Then he reached for the girl and found her skin still warm, almost feverishly hot, and beneath it was a steady beating.

Fujino had stayed kneeling beside her, heedless of the blood, while Officer Nagano called desperately for an ambulance. It only took a few shakes of the girl's shoulder to bring her back to consciousness. What happened next the officer never included in his report and only admitted to Dr. Naboru after a solemn oath of silence. The girl, Fujino said, sat straight up with one hand out to strike him. She was amazingly strong, the officer noted. He fell back against the bloody wall of the arcade, just inches from long tresses of raven black hair. When his eyes found her face, her gaze struck him twice as hard.


	8. Part 7

"Red," he whispered to the psychiatrist. One knee jiggled in a restless beat and his fingers twisted tightly together while his eyes slid sideways, away from the doctor's pitying gaze. "Blood red and _burning._ So much rage… The rest of them, her eyes, were blacker than night, so utterly dark they were just a tunnel into a void. But in that void was a raging bonfire of anger, no, of some unholy _wrath_ and _hatred._ I wanted to reach for my gun but I knew it wouldn't help. She was…God, she wasn't human."

"Anger and pain should be expected," Dr. Naboru tried to reassure the shaking man. "She had just seen the murders of six people. Even you and your partner were traumatized, and in that moment—"

"No!" Officer Fujino had roared, lunging up from his chair. "I am telling you exactly what I saw! Why the hell would I imagine _black and red eyes_? She looked at me and I knew she could burn me down and there was nothing I could do to stop her."

"Then why didn't she?"

Strangely, the officer's face softened into gentleness and grief.

"She put her hand down, probably to push herself up, and it fell on the boy next to her. She looked down at him…"

Fujino shook his head.

"I've never heard a sound like that before. It wasn't crying, or screaming. Maybe it was wailing? She pulled him towards her, sort of rolling him into her lap, and this horrible sound just kept coming from her. She didn't look at me even when I jumped up and reached for my gun. Instead she held his face between her hands and cried out, 'Endymion!' Over and over, screaming or moaning or whispering, always that word. Endymion. I don't even know what it means."

Dr. Naboru had not been able to confirm any of this with Fujino's partner, Officer Nagano. She had refused to see him or to talk about that night. Despite this, she had visited the girl's parents often to offer any support in her power. The parents said she seemed very interested in any progress their daughter might be making.

Three years later, as he stared out the window at the sinking sun, the doctor understood why Nagano wanted to keep close to the parents. Perhaps she honestly wanted to offer her support, but he knew that she also needed to know if there was a chance that the girl would ever be released.


	9. Part 8

It was not even a month after she had come to the hospital, barely three weeks, when a full moon came again. The traumatized girl became more and more agitated at night as she watched the moon swell. The night nurses reported that they could hear her talking to herself. Recordings from the camera in her locked room showed her pacing for hours, her eyes darting to the moon and then away. She flew from one state to another, grasping handfuls of her hair and squeezing her eyes shut only to suddenly turn in a slow, graceful arc. Dr. Naboru watched a recording where she spent several minutes like that, dancing a waltz with no partner. Then she crumpled to the ground burying her face in her knees, and wept for an hour.

At that point he had believed her obsession with the moon stemmed from how brilliant the full moon had been the night of the murders. He feared that seeing another night lit by that swollen silver orb would only be detrimental to her treatment and so he had ordered her window closed and covered. This only upset her more. She had tried to get through the wire mesh across the window and screamed at the nurses and orderlies when they entered her room. Never, in all the time that she had been at the hospital, had she shown any sign of violence. That night she had lunged at the people who had come to calm her, raking her nails down one man's arms and striking a woman in the face.

The doctor ordered sedatives, and stared with the others as the drugs had absolutely no effect. The screaming continued, an unending and building howl of anger, until the other patients began to shriek back at her. In desperation the doctor, a large male nurse, and two of the biggest orderlies available that night managed to maneuver the slender teenage girl down the hall and into a personal safety room, or as some still called it, a padded cell.

The night dragged on and still she screamed. She pounded her hands against the walls, shook the door with her small body, and flung herself to the floor where she lay for long stretches curled into the fetal position, her hands clapped tightly over her ears. Never did Dr. Naboru or the nurses see any sign of the sedatives taking off even the edge of her violent madness. With no sign of an end, but no way for her to seriously hurt herself, they had left her to it until exhaustion might do what the drugs could not.


	10. Part 9

A single sliver of the sun sat on the horizon when she suddenly went silent. Dr. Naboru, two other doctors who had arrived early in the morning, and several nurses rushed to the door of the padded room to find her asleep on the floor. Their focus was on the girl for any signs that she might still be awake and violent and so it was not until they opened the door that they saw the rest of the room.

Great gouges had been left in the thick, heavy coverings of the walls. The cuts ran so deep that the padding itself spilled out in several places. Several similar slashes covered the floor. In sets of five, they could only have come from her fingernails. Long strands of hair littered the floor in clumps. Handfuls, he guessed, ripped from her head when no one was watching. When the strands were lifted to the light, though, they were not gold but silver.

Perhaps the strength of lunacy could explain how she had managed to tear apart padding that had lasted against dozens of patients, but nothing could explain the burns found on the inside of the door.

She was carried back to her room and more sedatives were administered, just in case. Then Dr. Naboru, as well as the other two doctors, pulled up the recordings from her temporary room for the night and watched.

Or they tried. While she had still flung herself uselessly around the room the footage remained clear. Suddenly, though, she had swung around to look up directly at the camera. The doctors were left baffled by her knowledge of the camera's location, hidden between tiles of padding in a dark room. The hands that had been clasped against her head, over her ears, came away with those confusing strands of hair. For one second they saw her eyes clearly. Then the camera stopped and flashed into darkness.

Those eyes…

 _Red,_ the officer's voice had echoed through Dr. Naboru's head. _Blood red and burning._

The orderly who had been monitoring the cameras that night swore that the footage of her sudden outburst had continued the entire night. Never had she done anything but scream and beat the walls. The final glimpse of that fiery gaze had badly shaken the orderly. Still, he insisted she had never shown the violence that had destroyed the room and the camera had never stopped working.


	11. Part 10

Two weeks of calm followed. She sat quietly in her sessions and seemed to want to cooperate. For some time she even accepted that her friends and the boy she loved were dead, though she continued to claim no knowledge of how this happened. The doctor moved her into music and art therapy and had hopes for a change.

After the darkness of a new moon they all saw it again. The agitation, the pacing and talking to herself at night, the way her eyes always moved to watch the moon. She ceased cooperating with her sessions. Music therapy ended abruptly when she slammed the lid of the piano down, nearly taking off the fingers of the player. Her art consisted of symbols painted in different colors, always blue, gold, red, and green. The art therapist had watched in silent shock after the girl had spent nearly an hour tracing a thin crescent in dark gold paint. Suddenly she had turned the paper over so that the whole thing was upside down. She bothered with no brush as she plunged one hand into black paint and smeared it over the inverted crescent.

Then she had grasped the paper in both hands and tore it in half. The pieces she shredded, over and over, while sobs wracked her entire body. When the therapist had stepped towards her, hands out and soothing, she pushed the woman fiercely away. As no one could do anything but watch she sank to her knees amongst the scraps of paper, wrapping her arms over her stomach as she whispered a desperate apology.

"My small lady…oh, my small lady, I'm so sorry!"

Dr. Naboru never learned who "small lady" meant. That session she offered nothing but silence and slow tears.

A full moon rose that night, and she began to scream again.


	12. Part 11

The next day the cuts through the padding were just as deep but more prolific. Burns marked the door and, strangely, the ceiling. Whole locks of silver hair littered the floor, as well as small smears of what Dr. Naboru and two nurses decided must be blood. They could not explain the slightly metallic sheen to it, though. No one suggested it be analyzed. Again, the camera showed a young girl raging, then a moment of silence, and two burning red points in the darkness. Then nothing.

It was in the third month, just two days before the full moon, that he first heard the _other_ name.


	13. Part 12

He spoke her name three times in a session without reaction. When she finally looked at him there was no recognition in her eyes. Instead he saw something chilling, but not in the same manner as her wild rages. Authority lay in those blue eyes, and dignity. Her chin lifted at a slightly different angle, just a little higher, as she surveyed him.

"That," she finally told him, "is not my name."

Inside his chest, all his hopes for her progress sank just a little more. There had been signs of dissociation when she first arrived, in her claimed amnesia and her fluctuating acceptance of the deaths. Never, though, had she completely stepped into delusion before that day.

As carefully as possible, he coaxed another name from her. She told him with a hint of impatience, as though her name should be well known. Then she spoke of other things, of kingdoms and crystals, of castles and princesses and planets. With one finger she traced a shape across her forehead, the shape that had sent her sobbing once before.

A crescent.

"Endymion."

The doctor blinked uncertainly at her. "I'm sorry?"

"Where is Endymion?" she had demanded. "He should…he should be here. Why isn't he here? I feel I haven't seen him in so long."

This path only led to confusion and agitation. Finally he signaled the newest orderly to come and take her back to her room. As they walked down the hall he could see the orderly, a slender young woman with short hair that made her far too boyish for his taste, nodding gently along as the girl spoke. For a moment the doctor saw a hand placed on the patient's shoulder in a reassuring squeeze. It was the first time he had ever seen her accept physical comfort.

That full moon changed everything.


	14. Part 13

Dr. Naboru decided not to trust technology and the orderlies. Perhaps it was a strange coincidence, electrical failure two months in a row, or perhaps someone was playing a sick joke. The glowing red might just be a trick of the light, a glitch in the camera, or even the fears of Officer Fujino influencing Dr. Naboru's perception. The causes of the other failures were not relevant, he told himself. He would stay beside the door that night, and he would keep his eyes on her.

After two restless nights the staff took her directly to the personal safety room before the sun even went down. More for their own sake than hers, they made her take sedatives again. Dr. Naboru seriously wounded his own ethics when he prescribed for her enough medication to knock a fully grown man completely unconscious. She took them willingly enough, but only when he used the _other_ name.

Silence stretched for nearly half an hour. The staff slowly began to breathe, and to congratulate themselves just a little. They had stayed away from the observation window so as not to excite her. Reassured by the quiet, Dr. Naboru stepped forward and peered inside.

 _Blood red and burning…_

 _An unholy wrath and hatred…_

She had been waiting for him. She stood just beyond the door, her eyes merely inches from his, and he could never doubt Officer Fujino again. Black and red and blazing with her anger, those eyes fixed on him until he wanted to sink to the floor just to get away. Instead he watched, too terrified to move, as she stepped a little closer to the door. She put her hand up against the glass and studied his face. Her eyes slid up to his forehead and searched for something. He thanked whatever powers existed to protect humanity when she did not find what she sought.

Then she whispered, "Have you seen it?"

Finally, unwillingly, his voice pushed its way out of his mouth.

"What?"

"Have you seen it?" she asked again. "The dead world. They are waiting. He will come again, as he came before."

Decades of education and research fell away as he shook his head dumbly. Her delusion must have taken a messianic turn somewhere. Someone would come again…he…

"Endymion?" the doctor tried. "Endymion will come again?"

Her hand hit the reinforced glass hard enough to shake the door and send a nurse and two orderlies leaping backwards. Now she had her face to the window. From the gasping behind him Dr. Naboru knew they had all seen her eyes.

"Do not say his name," she snarled. The red in her eyes burned hotter. "Do not dare."

"I'm sorry. I don't understand."

"They will come again. They will bring their dead planet and their black marks." Another blow seriously tested the numerous locks on one side. "They wore _my_ mark! Polluted and turned around…My love and my friends and my small lady, all gone now. They took him from me!"

A long crack ran through the thick glass of the observation window. The door shuddered and something snapped on the other side.

"They took _everything_ from me!"

It was as he staggered back that Dr. Naboru realized her hair had turned entirely silver.

 _"_ _I will burn them all down! I will rip through the heart of that dead world! I am a child no more! NO PRINCESS!"_

The very floor seemed to shake beneath their feet.

 _"_ _A QUEEN OF BLOOD AND ASHES! I AM ALL THAT IS LEFT!"_

The door could not hold whatever was on the other side. No _human_ resided in that room on that night. Nothing came to his mind as he knew, as Officer Fujino had, that he could do nothing to stop her. Silver hair lifted, spread out around her, and her whole body began to glow. Pink light turned to crimson. Something brilliant marked her forehead, where she had traced a crescent just two days before, but he refused to look. Instead he tried to pray, but he could not remember a single prayer.


	15. Part 14

A laugh sounded throughout the hallway.

It took Dr. Naboru a moment to realize that the girlish laughter did not come from her. She, too, paused. Her forehead, burning gold, pressed to the window as she tried to peer down the hallway. Seeing nothing she craned her neck at an almost unnatural angle to look the other way.

"Wait, stop! Don't!"

He did not recognize the voice, but he knew she did.

"Turn that camera off! Come on, seriously!"

"Oh, smile, Ami-chan!"

"Minako, if you don't put that camera away I'm going to—Hey! Mako-chan!"

"No more books! No more studying! We're having _fun!_ "

More laughter poured out, several girls now. Voices overlapped as they shouted. Someone was demanding cupcakes. Music came distantly.

She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the door. Dr. Naboru could see the tears on her face. The red glow diffused once more to pink, though that remained, and her silver hair slowly settled around her. The hand on the glass curled into a loose fist as she listened.

"Okay, we need to have a toast!"

"You want toast? You just had a cupcake!"

"No, _odango,_ a toast. With glasses and drinks and—"

"You want to drink toast?"

"Ami, you take over."

Ever so slowly, she slumped down to the ground. With her head pressed against the wood and her eyes closed she stayed there, just listening. The recording lasted a few minutes more, jostled and confused and punctuated with more voices and more laughter.

The quiet lasted much longer.


	16. Part 15

The door had to be completely replaced. From inside the damage was far worse, and impossible to explain. Burns in the shape of hands marked nearly every inch of the surface. The edges of the broken window had melted slightly on one side. Hair, incredibly long and shimmering metallically, clung to every surface. Dr. Naboru counted it as a blessing that none of the padding suffered any damage this time.

Of the nurses and orderlies who had been in the ward that night, no one knew where the recording had come from. There had been no trace of it on the computer in the surveillance room. In fact, the two orderlies who had been in the room at the time could offer little more than confusion on how those voices had come through the overhead speakers.

Rubbing his eyes wearily, wanting nothing more than bed and a bottle of scotch, Dr. Naboru waved off the protestations of the two and stumbled for the door. One of the orderlies jumped to open it for him. He vaguely recognized the blue eyes and too short hair as the young woman smiled at him. Too tired to speak, he nodded his thanks and walked away down the hall.

There would be a staff meeting tomorrow, and some changes.


	17. Part 16

Sessions, Dr. Naboru explained to the board of hospital administrators, would need to continue in an attempt to keep her calm. Music and art therapy showed a tendency to ease her mind somewhat. As he spoke he laid out pictures of the rooms she had destroyed.

"This isn't possible," someone whispered. "How old?"

"Fourteen," Dr. Naboru said. "Not even one hundred pounds."

The picture of the burns on the door passed from hand to hand.

"Where did she get a heat source from?"

"She didn't have one."

A young man, new to the board, tossed the picture aside with barely a glance. "Is this a joke? Or some kind of trick?"

"I think," the doctor said slowly, each word sharp and clear as ice, "you will find that I do not tend toward jokes or tricks. _Especially_ when it comes to the mental health of a traumatized young girl."

"How are we supposed to believe that she could do this?" the newest board member insisted. "Was there any sign of violence before she came here?"

Dr. Naboru pulled from his briefcase another file folder. It was the folder the detective had given him three months before, the pictures of the crime scene that she had not been able to see again. After a moment of consideration he chose a photograph and laid it on the table.

Heat had burned most of the face too badly to be recognized, except where she had thrown up one arm. Much of her hair had been singed away but a few locks of dark blue could be seen in wisps upon the ground. Her neck was twisted at an unnatural angle, while her other arm wrapped over her chest, perhaps in an attempt to protect herself. As she was struck she had fallen backward with her legs stretched out in front of her. In the picture the shining white bone could be seen ripping through the flesh of her leg in several places.

"Mizuno Ami," he said. "Fourteen. A classmate and friend of the patient's. Genius level IQ, shy but kind, always willing to help others. Broken neck, ribs, and both femurs. Third degree burns over the entire front of her body."

The second picture came out, laid beside the first. Only the left side of the face was burnt, leaving the right side intact to show her last expression of horror. One blue eye still stared up at the merciless stars. Her right arm lay stretched out to her side, singed and struck with enough force to strip flesh away. In her hand was something gold, roughly the size of a large pen. Something had once decorated the top, but it had been broken off when the rest of the object cracked.

"Aino Minako," the doctor continued. "Fourteen. A classmate and friend. She had just moved to Tokyo less than a year ago. Good at singing, dancing, and volleyball. The back of her skull, where it hit the pavement, was shattered into fragments so small the coroner needed a magnifying glass to find them all. Third degree burns over most of the front of her body. Ribs crushed in until they punctured nearly every internal organ."

A third photograph was laid beside the other two. Despite the burns, the lacerations, and the near lake of blood, her raven black hair remained clean and silky. Whatever had exploded out from the center of that group had thrown her into the arcade wall. The scorching heat left a perfect outline of her body on the brick before she had slumped down to the sidewalk. She lay curled on her side on the cement, her hands together almost as though she was praying.

"Hino Rei. Also fourteen, also a friend. She went to a different school than the other girls. From what people told the police, she was aloof, a little proud, and had a temper. Fiercely loyal. She would never have thought for a second to leave her friends. Burns over the front of her body, broken spine, broken neck, broken tibia…just broken. Also, she seems to have been holding something red. Shards of red crystal or glass were found in her hand."

The fourth image made him wince. Her face was nearly gone. She lay in a heap, limbs twisted and splayed in ways they never should. From the damage the medical examiners had guessed she had been closest to the source of the blast. They found blood that was not her own on her hands as well as scraps of white cloth, all of which they later matched to the boy with the white hair.

"Kino Makoto. Fourteen. Classmate. Friend. You can't see it, but she was tall for her age. The patient's parents say she loved to cook. Her own parents died several years ago, so they at least did not have to see…Protective, gentle, a little unsure of herself. Third degree burns over the front of her body, massive blunt force trauma to her face and skull, and a broken neck. The fabric in her hands is from another victim, so the medical examiners think she was grappling with him or holding onto him when it happened."

"When _what_ happened?" one of the administrators asked.

Instead of answering, the doctor brought out three more pictures, lining them up in a row.


	18. Part 17

"No one knows who this was," he admitted. "But, as you can see, there wasn't much to work with. Definitely a young man with what looks to be white hair. There was some kind of mark on his forehead, a black mark, but it was too damaged to be exactly made out. His skull alone took the examiners nearly an entire day to piece back together. The broken ribs…well, obviously they broke the wrong way. Up and out, through the skin of his chest. The police and examiners never really found his heart."

The administrators stared silently. Never before had something like this come in their way, and Dr. Naboru watched their minds reel. He understood how they felt. When he stepped into the room that had been so destroyed the day before he had felt his understanding of the world shift in ways he never could have imagined. He was a man of science, holding degrees from Tokyo University in psychology and neurology. Awards decorated his home office, awards for discoveries and breakthroughs, for humanitarianism, and for leadership in times of strife.

Now he stood, shaken and afraid, and asked intelligent men and women to see the same shaken, shifted world.

"Every bone," Dr. Naboru told them, "was broken. Shattered, really. The reports from the medical examiners say that they gave up trying to put him completely back together. This young man, whoever he was, took the brunt of the damage. _He_ was the catalyst for whatever happened that night to those five other victims."

"Why?" someone whispered. It could have been anyone. It was written on all of their faces as they stared up at him. "Why would anyone do this?"

Dr. Naboru drew out one more picture and lay it down.


	19. Part 18

"Chiba Mamoru. Seventeen. Not shy, but not outgoing. Kept to himself. Does not seem to have had a lot of friends. Smart, polite, well-liked by his teachers and his classmates. He never turned in an assignment late, never fought with anyone, never made a single enemy that anyone knows of."

"He was older? So why was he there?"

"He was the patient's boyfriend. Her parents knew about him, there was no great secret. They liked him and thought he was a nice boy, though they worried about how… _intense_ the relationship was."

Another administrator, an older woman, leaned forward to study the boy's picture more closely.

"He doesn't look injured at all."

"One stab wound, straight to the heart," Dr. Naboru told them. "He would have died almost instantly. They never found the blade. His blood was on the front of the patient's shirt and on her sleeves."

The silence hung over the room for several long moments. He saw the scene so clearly in his mind. Mamoru bleeding in her arms as Ami, Minako, and Rei rushed toward them. Makoto holding the other boy, perhaps struggling with him. His blood got on her hands somehow. Then Mamoru drew his last breath and her pain and her rage became a weapon, a wave of burning fury that lashed out at his murderer and swept her friends along in its wake.

"She loved her friends," the doctor whispered. "She didn't mean to hurt them. Whatever happened to them was an accident. But what she did to the other victim, to the person who killed the boy she loved, that was completely intentional. She meant to do it and she would do it again."

The board looked at the pictures, then at each other, and finally up to him.

"What should we do?" the older woman asked helplessly. "If she can do this…And the door…What _can_ we do?"

"She can never leave," Dr. Naboru said simply. "Maybe if we stay at the sessions we can make her understand what happened. If she can learn to accept what she did, then perhaps she can begin to heal. But until that happens she cannot leave. She would be too dangerous."

"She's dangerous here," the newest administrator reminded him. "How can we let her stay here?"

"Sessions can help us learn to negate some of her anger at the full moon. In a year or so we may find a way to stop the attacks altogether."


	20. Part 19

_Stop the attacks altogether._

The work ricocheted hollowly throughout Dr. Naboru's head as he turned from the window. Somehow, despite what he had already seen, he had still been an optimist when he had spoken those words. How could he have ever been fool enough to think that whatever darkness dwelt inside that girl could ever be tamed? In the three years she had been under his "care" he had learned to control her anger just enough to restrain her from destroying the entire hospital. That was all.

By the end of the first year he had realized she was not likely to ever come to terms with the deaths of those she loved. Some days she mourned them, wept for them and whispered apologies they could not hear, and some days she still asked for them.

Very rarely did she speak those most dangerous of words, "small lady." He never asked and the rest of the staff was forbidden from mentioning it. She was at her most vulnerable, and unpredictable, when she thought of her small lady. There was a procedure for dealing with those days.

There was a procedure for _everything._

By the end of the first year the hospital had built a special room for her. A military contractor from America had been quietly hired and paid to stay silent. The padding remained the same, something to keep her safe from herself, but the walls were twice as thick as the original safety rooms. One door had become three, so that if she managed to tear through the first they might have time enough to evacuate the patients from her path. They had never reached that point.

Yet.

Speakers allowed music to be piped in. The art therapist, who had also taken over music in the last year, chose each month's selection. So far it had helped to calm the anger and guilt enough that they usually only needed to replace a small amount of the padding. There were no microphones and no cameras inside the cell. No one could bear to hear or see what happened in there. Between sundown and sunrise no one was permitted past the first door. Looking through the window, and especially making eye contact with the patient, was strictly forbidden.

Dr. Naboru headed out into the hallway and began to make his way toward the secure ward. There was nearly an hour until sundown. Over time they had learned the best time to move her to the secure room. When they tried to move her into the cell at the beginning of the day, with the belief that this might minimize any danger she might pose to others, she had become increasingly hostile as they waited for nightfall. The next morning they had found three walls of the padding completely destroyed, and burn marks across the floor and ceiling. As this was their first time using this room the engineer had still been on hand. His face was ashen as he stared at interior of the reinforced door, the one he had sworn could hold an elephant. The blows had been strong enough to seriously strain the massive locks on the door.

Moving her too late in the day had ended even worse. The injuries of two nurses, one orderly, and another doctor had taken months to properly heal. They had been offered an early retirement with a very handsome pension for their "loyalty". Strangely, only the nurses and doctor took the offer. The orderly had returned to work when she could.

The memory came back clearly to Dr. Naboru as he spotted the young woman. Only a slight scar across her left cheek remained. The orbital socket had healed nicely from the fracture, and he had never seen even a hint of a limp. She stood at the door to the secure ward, waiting for him. Despite the injuries and such little hope for the girl's future, she insisted on accompanying the girl to her secure cell every month. The doctor worried that the orderly was becoming too attached to the patient, even granting her the nickname Kitten.

Beside the orderly was the art therapist, leaning in to listen to her speak. Both were young, far younger than anyone else on the staff. He wondered again that they were hired, with the art therapist barely older than the girls in her charge. But something in her eyes, aquamarine and deep as the ocean, hinted at hidden wisdom, and her talents could not be denied. She looked at him as he approached and offered him a pretty smile. He nodded back distractedly and looked to her companion.

"Are you ready, Miss Ten'ou?"

"Yes, doctor." The orderly exchanged a glance with Miss Kaiou, who briefly squeezed her arm, and then followed him through the secure door and into the ward.

It was remarkably quiet as they walked down the corridor. With dangerously disturbed patients a certain amount of noise, of shouting and banging, was to be expected. Instead, the silence was broken only by the soft sounds of their footsteps. When Dr. Naboru glanced through a few windows he could see the young women sitting still. Some were trying to read, some were trying to draw, and some had abandoned pretense and merely perched at the edge of their beds, tense and waiting. It was always quiet just before a full moon.

As they reached her door the doctor paused to listen. Silence there as well. Dr. Naboru looked to the nurse and orderly who waited there. Both had the same look of strained listening as the patients.

"I haven't heard a word, doctor," the nurse informed him softly. "Not even crying or things being thrown."

This was not as reassuring as it might seem. He had found her silences could be a forewarning to more madness than any screaming rage.

It was time, though, and he could not muse on that for long. He typed in the code on the keypad beside the door. There was a beep, and a click, and the door swung open.


	21. Part 20

She stood with her back to him, her head tipped back to look out the window. Her hair still fell in glorious golden tresses over her shoulders and past her waist. She was slightly taller than when she first arrived, but she would always be little. Dr. Naboru doubted she weighed any more than when she arrived. She was thin, almost painfully so.

As she turned around her thinness became even more apparent. Her cheek bones jutted out sharply under the pale skin. Her eyes looked enormous, far too large for her face. With only the occasional glimpses of the sun through her window she had gone as pale as the moon itself. He could still see hints of color in her lips and her cheeks, but they were as faded as watercolors.

The beauty of what she might have been broke his heart just a little more.

"Usagi," he said quietly.

There was not even a blink. Her gaze moved from him to the other three people waiting behind him. Her eyes, thankfully still blue, drifted over the group. She offered a tiny smile, though he was not entirely certain at whom.

"Usagi," the doctor tried again, slightly louder.

She began to turn away, back toward the window and the setting sun. He hated to acknowledge the other part of her. Decades of training told him to never play into the patient's delusions. This, however, was not a text book case or patient, and so he called her again.

"Serenity."

Once more, it worked. Immediately he had her attention. This time the little smile was for him. It was cool and distant and undeniably regal. Her chin took on that slight tilt that somehow made her appear more than just a young, sick girl.

It gave her the air of a queen.

"Dr. Naboru," the girl said by way of greeting. "I was beginning to worry."

He raised his eyebrows politely and tried for a smile of his own. "You were? Why?"

"You're usually here five minutes earlier."

It made him pause. Never, before her fits or after, had she given anyone reason to think that she remembered them. Yet somehow she knew that this night was different.

"Why do you think I'm here?" he asked carefully, hoping not to agitate her.

She thought it over carefully for a moment. Finally, she said, "You take me someplace safe."

"Do you know why I take you someplace safe?"

"To keep me safe?" she guessed. He could see the slight hesitation. She was wrestling with the questions, his and her own, struggling to put together things that her mind had held apart for so long. Then she shook her head and looked again to the three behind him. "Should we go?"

Even after three years of battle with her self-imposed amnesia, watching her turn her back on her own memories felt like a blow.

Dr. Naboru did not let this show. He gestured the two orderlies forward. They each took one tiny arm in their hands as gently as they could. Handcuffs or other restraints, they feared, might cause her to lash out before they had her secured.

Also, they knew what she could do to those meager restraints.

The nurse walked at the head of their group. Her eyes swept left and right in search of a door left carelessly open or a patient out of her room. This was not the night that anyone would be breaching the rules.

The orderlies walked just behind the nurse, the girl between them. The girl seemed to accept them as part of her security, much like a girl born into royalty might. To the doctor's trained eyes it was clear that the girl preferred Miss Ten'ou to the male orderly. She seemed to lean on Miss Ten'ou's arm slightly and to murmur to her. Whatever she said made the orderly laugh.

Dr. Naboru went last so that he could observe her. His hopes for any kind of recovery had become slim, but still he searched for the key to her mind. There might yet be a way to wake up Tsukino Usagi, the fourteen-year-old girl who snuck out to meet her friends and her boyfriend in front of the Crown Arcade. That girl had been knocked unconscious by the same force that killed her friends. He had seen fragments of that person hiding in the confusion and barriers. One day, he hoped, he might be able to bring her back.

The transfer passed smoothly. Usagi, or Serenity, stood quietly as they checked to make sure she had not hidden any kind of weapon on her body. It was more of a gesture to standard procedure than a real need. With what she could do to thick padded walls with her bare hands, no weapon was necessary.

As the orderlies prepared to leave the cell, Miss Ten'ou turned to give the patient one last look.

"Will you be alright?"

The patient nodded. "I'll be fine."

"Okay. I'll see you in the morning, your highness."

With that, Miss Ten'ou bowed and left the room. As Dr. Naboru closed the first door he caught sight of the girl standing there in the dark, so small and fragile. The last things he saw, as he latched the locks, were her blue eyes.

It was only after the third door was closed and locked that the doctor turned to Miss Ten'ou with a frown of disapproval.

"I don't want you addressing her as 'your highness'," he told her. "That girl is confused enough in her head. If you acknowledge her delusions they only become more real to her."

The young woman did not appear the least cowed by him. For a moment her eyes blazed up in anger and her mouth opened to fire back a reply. Whatever it was remained unsaid as she snapped her mouth shut with an audible click. She was looking over his shoulder, and he turned.

Dr. Meiou stood behind him. Dark hair was swept back from her face, with part of it pulled into a small bun and the rest allowed to fall down her back. Her face was as serene and cool as ever. She looked at the doctor with mild curiosity as she closed the folder she had clearly just been reading.

"How did the transfer go?" Dr. Meiou asked politely, as easily as she might ask about a minor dental procedure.

"It went well," Dr. Naboru told her. "The patient is…no worse."

This earned nothing but a nod from Dr. Meiou. She was smart, he knew, shockingly smart with fascinating insights. Several times he had wanted to go to her for help with this case. Somehow, though, the young woman intimidated him slightly. Perhaps, in part, it was that he had no idea who she was or how she joined the hospital. Not long after the patient was admitted Dr. Meiou seemed to just appear one day.

"If you don't need her right now, may I borrow Miss Ten'ou?" Dr. Meiou asked, breaking him from his thoughts. "She'll be back before sunrise."

"Of course," Dr. Naboru told her.

With another friendly smile Dr. Meiou continued on her way with Miss Ten'ou following behind. He watched them go and then rubbed his hand over his face. Weariness pressed down hard on him as he prepared for another long night.

"Doctor," the nurse said gently, "we have a cot set up. Let's get you some sleep. The morning will be here soon enough."

He nodded and let her lead him away from the three locked doors and what would soon be raging behind them.


	22. Part 21

"You can't tell the doctors to go to hell, Haruka."

The young woman orderly with the slight scar merely scoffed in contempt. She and Meiou Setsuna exited the ward side by side. Without the watching nurses and doctors, the pretense of deference was no longer necessary. Kaiou Michiru waited for them, a book open in her hands as she attempted to read. When she heard Setsuna's voice she instantly dropped the book and moved to meet them. Without thought, her hand reached for Haruka's.

"How is she?"

"Well enough," Haruka said with a shrug. "She's Serenity right now."

"She's always Serenity," Setsuna reminded them, "it's just that those memories are at the forefront of her mind right now."

Haruka rolled her eyes at the repeated explanation and continued. "I'm not allowed to call her 'you highness'. Apparently, _that_ might make her crazy. Crazier."

"Don't call her crazy," Michiru pleaded. "She's just…"

"Just what, love?" Haruka asked gently. "After what she lived through, after what she did, crazy must seem like an awfully safe place."

Setsuna shook her head as she turned her back on her partners, pacing up and down the corridor before them. Haruka and Michiru exchanged a pained glance but let her go. These were the times when the Time Keeper needed to move. She said it helped her think, but Haruka often thought she looked like a caged animal. Queen Serenity had not been kind when she had placed Sailor Pluto before the Gates of Time, and once more a wave of bitterness swept through Haruka.

A soft squeeze on her hand made her look to Michiru. Haruka wondered, sometimes, if things would have been different. If the heir to the Silver Millennium had been allowed to continue on as a normal girl, if their lives had connected somewhere else other than a meeting with a strange woman that had been no mere chance, would they have still been drawn together? Would Michiru still cling to her when their futures hung so perilously in the balance?

Would they have been friends and nothing more?

Partners?

Or would they have missed each other completely, passing one another on a street without ever thinking to glance left or right, to see something so precious so close?

"We can't do it."

Haruka's attention swung back to Setsuna as she fumbled to remember what her friend had been saying. A glance at Michiru showed a similar confusion. Occasionally, when pacing no longer helped, Setsuna would begin talking to herself.

This time, though, she turned sharply on her heel and stared at the other two Senshi.

 _We are the last,_ Haruka remembered yet again. _Just three._

"We can't wake the Silent One."

Michiru jerked upright and stared in horror. "Were we considering waking her?"

"No. Yes. Perhaps."

"Well, which was it?" Haruka demanded. "Were you thinking about it or not?"

The other woman closed her eyes and shook her head slowly. Her lashes were wet. Haruka felt a jab of guilt in her chest. Setsuna so rarely cried.

"It wasn't supposed to be like this. Our Queen…our King…and Small Lady…"

This time Michiru turned her back. She held tightly to her lover's hand but refused to watch Setsuna anymore. The loss of the other Senshi, of friendships that could have been, left them all with a hollow ache. Setsuna's love for the man who could never have been her own cut like a knife. And then there was the agony of watching in utter helplessness as their charge, their duty, their queen dove headlong into madness to escape the horror of her own power.

But this pain, the grief for a child who had not died because she had never lived, somehow that carved into them the deepest.

"They never mention Luna or Artemis," Michiru suddenly spoke. "The doctors, the nurses, even her parents…they don't know."

Setsuna's shoulders shook slightly. She, at least, had some memories of the feline advisors, and perhaps of one more. Haruka remembered the name Diana whispered the first time Setsuna had collapsed in tears.

"We can't wake her," the oldest Senshi whispered again, "but I don't know what else to do. There are things coming for us, and Nemesis is still out there, and if Serenity remains the way she is she could end it all just as surely as Saturn. Perhaps even more thoroughly."

Encouraged by Setsuna's change in subject, Michiru turned back around and leaned into Haruka.

"Then what?" Michiru asked. "What do we do?"

"I don't…I don't know." Setsuna slumped into a cheap plastic chair, the kind found in the hallways of hospitals the world over. "I don't know what to do."

The lovers glanced at each other again. Haruka gave a small nod. They had discussed this before, when Setsuna was busy with the hospital, and a decision had been reached. It had just been a matter of timing.

"Setsuna," Michiru began slowly, "could you—?"

"Change the timeline?" the other woman interrupted. "Go back, move something here or there, and rewrite history?"

"Yes," Haruka agreed instantly. "Could you?"

"I could. And it could make it all so much worse."

"Worse than choosing between a queen gone completely off the deep end and a creature that can literally only rain down destruction?" Haruka shot back.

"What would you have me do?" Setsuna snapped. "Stop the Black Moon from revolting? Make Nemesis stop spinning? Or something little, like handing over one of the Chronos Keys to a child so she could go back in time for help?"

The couple shrugged almost in unison.

"That last idea has merit," Michiru mentioned.

"Except for one slight problem. It's too late."

"What do you mean?"

Setsuna slumped once more. "I cannot give something to a child who does not exist. I thought about it once, you know. Thought about giving Small Lady a key, in case of emergencies, but…No. That would be too much for a child, and too dangerous. So I withheld the key, and my power, and now…now there are only memories that are sliding further and further away."

The other two said nothing. There was nothing they could say.

Then the Time Keeper shook her head and focused on them. "Tomorrow I will offer my help to Naboru. I've given up on him ever coming to me. Through him we will do what we can for our queen, and then…then we will see what the future holds."


End file.
